I baked: German plum cake (Pflaumenkuchen)

Dear readers and friends, thanks so much for your well wishes. I am slowly but surely recovering. Normal blogging should resume tomorrow. Til then, here's another guest post by The Unc on a local German favourite, plum cake or pflaumenkuchen.

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Plums are one of those seasonal fruits which come in abundance at a certain point of the year. I got my hands on some plums and decided to bake a local German favourite, the plum cake also known as Pflaumenkuchen or Zwetschgenkuchen.

The plums that I received were planted in the backyard (I presume that they are grown without the use of chemicals) and were tasty eaten on their own. But seeing that I had received an absolutely HUGE bag of plums and the recipe I found was pretty simple, it was certainly a great opportunity to try baking this lovely cake. Some recipes recommend the use of Streusel but I decided to go for the simpler alternative.

Handpicked the plums from this plum tree ;)

The texture is denser in comparison to the texture of a chiffon cake and the sweet baked plums complements the cake nicely. For me personally, this cake is best eaten the following day but you can also serve it warm if you please. This recipe is definitely perfect for those who are uninitiated in the art of baking as the steps are pretty much fool proof, given that this was also the first cake I baked.


Pflaumenkuchen/Zwetschgenkuchen (German plum cake)
Recipe from chefkoch.de
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 30-40 minutes
Serves 8 - 10

Ingredients
4 eggs
150g caster sugar
125ml oil
300g flour, sifted
1/2 packet of German baking powder (one packet has 15g and is suitable for 500g of flour)
125ml milk
20-25 plums (these were quite small ones)

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C (no fan).

2. Prepare the plums by cutting it on one side taking out the seed and quartering the plum.

3. Beat the eggs with the sugar. Mix in the oil and set aside.

4. Then, mix the flour with the baking powder and milk. Mix all the ingredients together gradually.

5. Pour the mixture into a springform pan and arrange the plums on top of the mixture.

6. Bake it for about 30 to 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

7. Cool on a rack. For me, the cake tasted better the following day but you can also serve it warm.